Make Pretend Cupcakes on a Budget

We’re introducing the letter “B” in class this week, and decided to create a birthday party theme in our dramatic play center. I wanted some pretend cupcakes to add as props, but the store-bought toys I found were out of my budget. After a trip to my local dollar store, I created simple, durable cupcakes for under $5.

Materials

• Cupcake liners 
• Small circular containers (comes in a set of 6 with lids)
• Floral Foam (Styrofoam) balls (comes in a set of 3, 2.4 inches, but you can use a bigger size too)
• Streamer roll (icing)
• Hot glue gun
• Red pom-poms
• Melty ironing beads (sprinkles, optional)

Setup

Simply gather your supplies and remove the lids from the plastic containers

Directions

1. Select a cupcake liner from the package and hot glue the plastic container to the inside. This will allow the Styrofoam ball to sit up higher and serve as the base of the cupcake. Also glue around the edges of the cupcake liner and push it up against the outside wall of the container.
2. Glue the inside perimeter of the container and stick the Styrofoam ball on top.  Let it set before going to the next step.
3. For the icing, start gluing a stream of beads at the top of the Styrofoam ball.  Continue gluing around the ball, folding and twisting the streamer as you go to give it more of an icing look.
4. Finish wrapping the ball with the streamer by cutting the edge and tucking it into one of the icing folds.
5. Add little dabs of glue to the top for the red pom-pom (cherry) and melty beads (sprinkles), if desired.
6. Repeat for additional cupcakes

And there you have it, cute little toy cupcakes for your preschool and kinders to enjoy while playing and learning.

To learn more about changing your dramatic play center into a themed birthday party, check out this blog post.